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The distinguished historian of the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt, once remarked that the true use of history is not to make men more clever for the next time but to make them wiser forever. Admittedly, it is not easy to learn from history, though almost every statesman and general has professed to have done so. In the first place, people often disagree as to the correct lesson to be drawn from a particular historical experience. For example, quite different lessons regarding military strategy for fighting limited wars were drawn from the frustrating experience of the Korean War and once again, quite ominously, from the failure of American military power in the Vietnam War. Second, even if people agree on the correct lessons to be drawn from a particular historical case, they often misapply those lessons to a new situation that differs from the past one in important respects.

In recent years the UN Commission on Human Rights has been widely and severely castigated for its failures to live up to the vision of being a genuine protector of victims of human rights abuses and instead becoming a shield for the violators. This article provides an assessment of these criticisms of the Commission by exploring its historical beginnings, its notable achievements, and its manifest shortcomings, and then analyzes how these and other factors came into play when the membership of the United Nations decided to replace the Commission with the new Human Rights Council. * Paul Gordon Lauren is Regents Professor at The University of Montana and the author of eleven books, including the pioneering and widely acclaimed The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen and Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination. His work has been translated into seven languages. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University and previously served as the founding director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center and as the Mansfield Professor of Ethics and Public Affairs. Lauren has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and a Fulbright Senior Specialist, in addition to receiving many awards for his teaching, research, administrative leadership, and public service. He also has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, lectured widely around the world, and delivered invited addresses at the Smithsonian Institution and the United Nations. The author would like to thank the individuals who granted interviews for this assessment, including those very close both to the Commission on Human Rights and to the recent negotiations over the creation of the Human Rights Council who wish to remain anonymous, to those who are acknowledged in the notes that follow, and to those who offered comments and suggestions, especially the members of the Columbia University Human Rights Seminar. Vol. 29 308 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

This article examines the contributions of early legal texts and thoughts to the development of the concept of justice and human rights. It analyses ideas about justice and human rights in ancient Near and Middle East, ancient China, ancient India, Classical Greece and Rome, the Medieval Period, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment Period. It considers the relevant works of several ancient thinkers including Mencius, Plato and Cicero and suggests that they provided significant lessons and laid the essential foundations for developments that eventually would result in international human rights law.